[Fsfe-ie] Eben Moglen in Harvard

Ciaran O'Riordan ciaran at member.fsf.org
Sat Feb 28 16:10:46 CET 2004


[ about RealPlayer format]
> and a pre-release open source player is available from
> <https://player.helixcommunity.org/>.

You've been tricked.  That software is not open source or free software.
It's an easy scam to fall for though, since they've made press releases
which claim that the whole player is "open source" - a new low for
RealNetworks IMHO.

The software at that site is released under a combination of 4 licenses,
all quite long and newly written by RealNetworks.  Both FSF and Debian
have rejected all four.

The OpenSource team have certified *one* of those licenses as OpenSource
- but that license only applies to parts of the interface, not the
codec, so to use that player to view RealPlayer format videos, you must
install the proprietary codec software too.

I mailed the JOLT at harvard people about a week before Ebens talk and
asked that they make it available in a format which has a free software
player - and they said they would.  They made a previous talk (by Darl
McBride) available in Speex format, but it took a few days extra so
maybe if you check back to their speakers page in a few days, there will
be a playable version.

In the mean time, a transcript of Ebens harvard talk is at:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040226003735733

And here's an Ogg of a previous (better, IMO) talk by moglen:
http://courses.durhamtech.edu/~jeremy/moglen/eben_moglen.ogg

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan
http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/
Irish Free Software Organisation: http://ifso.info/



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